("Dear Frankie." Miramax. DVD. 106 min. Rated PG-13. $29.99. In stores July 5. Grade: B+.) "Dear Frankie" is the sort of film that would never have been made by an American studio. It's too warm, too sweet _ too devoid of explosions. Start with the bittersweet...

There are things that happen in real life, and there are things that only happen in the movies. If the latter sometimes seem plausible, chalk it up to the power of cinema to make us believe the unbelievable. "Dear Frankie" makes a convincing case that a mother who...

DEAR FRANKIE ***/5 Starring Jack McELhone, Emily Mrtimer, Gerard Butler,Sharon Small, Mary Riggans, Sean Brown, Jayd Johnson,John Kazek, Katy Murphy. Certificate : 15. IN an effort to hide froms her abusive ex-partner, single mother Lizzie (Mortimer) transplants...

"DEAR FRANKIE" (2005) Director Shona Auerbach's Scottish-made festival circuit entry tells the nominally offbeat but also seemingly predictable story of single mom Lizzie (Emily Mortimer), who for years has been secretly replying to the letters her young son, Frankie...

Every week films get a second chance at success from the home market; or, in some cases, a first chance at success. Here is a list of wide releases, limited releases, classics and a few from the growing TV on DVD section. Usually the first week of the month is the...

With "Dear Frankie," I discovered a director whose next film I will want to see. Scottish director Shona Auerbach's first feature film is "Dear Frankie," a wonderful movie about the love between a mother and son. There is a very daring moment is this film and it,...

Films like "Dear Frankie" resemble good short stories. The investment of an hour or two reaps the reward of a rich and satisfying, if brief, visit into lives both like and unlike our own. The story told in "Dear Frankie" is sweet and heartbreaking and quietly told, an...

Lies told in the name of love are at the core of “Dear Frankie.” They’re elaborate lies. They’re inventive lies. They’re lies written by a Scottish mother to her son to shield him from painful truths about his long-absent father. In director Shona Auerbach’s lovely...

For whatever reason, the moral difficulty of raising children is rarely examined with any semblance of literary seriousness on film. Instead, this divisive but highly accessible theme is regularly reduced to being good fodder for bad comedies. That may be good news...

Finally, my hero has returned. I've been waiting for him for a while now. I was beginning to despair of fantasizing like a teenager. Ever since the last James Bond, since Russel Crowe (Gladiator), and since Rocco the porn star, I've been anticipating my new hero as...

Sometimes, as a break from the shoot-’em-up ear-splitting of mainstream Hollywood, you just need to watch a sweet, loving film about a mother who tricks her deaf son into thinking a perfect stranger is his father. And no, that wasn’t meant to be sarcastic. Despite the...

Four stars. This seems to be the month for enchanting little films from across the pond. Danny Boyle's "Millions" opened locally last week, and today it's followed by director/cinematographer Shona Auerbach's achingly poignant "Dear Frankie," a film as grounded in...

Directed by Shona Auerbach. Starring Emily Mortimer, Jack McElhone and Gerard Butler. Rating: 8 out of 10 First-time director Shona Auerbach understands what some directors never learn: that the space between words is as important as the words themselves. We see that...

Frankie, the 9-year-old boy at the center of the sweet, enormously touching Scottish film "Dear Frankie," is deaf, mute and always the new kid in town. His mother, Lizzie (Emily Mortimer), has been uprooting him every few months since he was little, moving from city...

"Dear Frankie" is sickeningly cruel or tenderly sweet. Sometimes it's one or the other; sometimes it's both at the same time. Perhaps the same statements are true of parenthood. The jarring, yet sentimental Cockney drama from first-time feature director Shona Auerbach...